


Shoelaces

by FrogFacey



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, are they headcanons or am I just projecting?, professionals are stumped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 15:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19976347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrogFacey/pseuds/FrogFacey
Summary: Apparently, you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes. Sal seeks to prove common theories wrong.Alternative title:Everything I write turns into Sal Fisher based introspection and I don't know how to stop it.





	Shoelaces

It was said that you can tell a lot about a person from their shoes. 

When Sal made a point of observing he found a great deal of not a lot. Which sucks for that theory.

It did mean he spent a lot of time with his head down which became kind of an inconvenience once he started growing his hair. He was seeing a lot less shoe and a lot more blue.

And since he wasn’t obviously a part of any stoner grunge gang or in a shitty garage band, people weren’t so lenient on the hair thing. Getting a haircut and also a real job was usually the first thing any parent, teacher or legal guardian ever thought in his direction. 

The kids around him weren’t usually as eloquent about it. Most of the time it was just them going “Hi _Sally_!” in some condescending voice they technically couldn’t get in trouble about. They were dumb but they were smart about it.

He did remember one very special occasion. One of the times he was invited to someone’s house, while he was busy with his gaze focussed on everyone’s feet, some mum looked him up and down, took a double take and said “Oh.”

It wasn’t like one day he got up and decided he was going to do something fun with his face or make a homemade paper mache mannequin costume. He wasn’t going out of his way to be intentionally creepy.

Which was another reason he tended to keep out of everyone's way. Shoes are a great deal further away from eyes, which meant he missed out on a lot of judgemental looks.

It didn't even start as an experiment at first. After the six months off and sporadic school days he got used to not making eye contact. Most of the people he looked at had strange squished up faces of sympathy. Faces that said they were two seconds from giving you a casserole and saying they're "so sorry about what happened"

Faces that looked Sal up and down and said "Oh."

And then people got curious and started asking why he was so intently focused on the floor, to which he answered he was testing out a theory. Then he guessed he should actually do that, instead of lying to everyone rather than just saying that eye contact is the actual worst.

He found out that a lot of people seemed to like wearing sneakers to school and practical yet smart and presentable shoes to work.

Surprising nobody.

And then it just became a habit.

The first thing he ever did when he met someone new was stare directly at their shoes, before moving his gaze somewhere more acceptable like their shoulder or neck or hair.

He found that hair was a good place to look. His prosthetic shadowed his eye just enough to keep his expressions visible while still keeping it just ambiguous enough that he could look in someone’s vague direction and they knew he’d be looking at them.

It was useful when he was talking to authority mostly. School principals and such. It appeared that it was very easy to pin the blame for random things on him. Apparently he just “looked shifty” according to his Dad, but then he said that it wasn’t his fault and people should really stop thinking like that and that balanced it out.

“Hey, Sally.” there was a certain tone people used. Just enough to get on your nerves but not enough for teachers to pick up on really. One got angry once, but that was just because the kid hadn’t picked up on the rules yet and had started just straight up calling him a girl.

“What’s with the face Sally?” well you really shouldn’t have been scowling at them. It’s hard to see what you’re feeling when you’re staring at the ground.

“Nice hair Sally Face.” see? It’s a compliment really. You shouldn’t take everything as a threat.

You should feel better in your own skin.

 _New skin when you really think about it_.

And whatever, if he felt more comfortable eating alone in his room then so be it. He was fine, it was fine, life was fine. Fuck his friends.

Then they made the big move.

But he was… Sort of sad about it.

Their old house had memories, some better than others, and he had been there since he was a kid and that's where they first got Gizmo and that’s where he finally got his glass eye and-

God, it was scary.

Granted, new school. Which meant no one actually knew what happened and no one was there when he didn’t turn up the next day and no one read the newspaper and no one gave him pats on the shoulder and no one turned up crying in the living room and no one gave him awkward looks in the hallway.

Well no, he’d still get looks. Thankfully staring at the ground fixes that one right up.

Any time he spent not staring out the car window he spent staring at his shoes and the empty box of crackers by his feet.

They made a real trip out of it. Thrice stopping at whatever local food joint they could find and eating snacks at whatever truck stop struck their fancy. It pissed off the movers but they were always so… Careful?

It wasn’t the right word but it was close enough.

They were careful with them. Everyone sort of knew what happened and if they didn’t they got the vibes. Sal’s face was very good at giving off vibes. His Dad was too, he had an aura about him.

Which sucked like shit to admit but it was true. They were both such little shitty rays of fucking sunlight.

Sal did try to be, they both did. They had gotten better at being smiley and polite around people but his Dad always had that “I’ve just been crying and this is the first thing I’ve genuinely smiled at all day” kind of look and it put people off. Guests were always just a little cautious around them.

Cautious. That was the word he was looking for.

Like one wrong move would send shit flying to the fan and his Dad would cry and Sal would lash out.

Eugh.

He didn’t _mean_ to look shifty it’s just that he couldn’t really express properly.

Well, kind of. He was really good at talking with his hands.

His Dad said he looked like the world's most enthusiastic tv presenter, which for a while made him stop out of self-consciousness but once he realised it was really good for conveying things he wouldn’t usually be able to (mostly facial expressions and sarcasm) he started up again.

A teacher he had once said that people who talk with their hands are more dramatic. Or creative. One of the two he couldn’t remember.

It was a world of possibility! A shitty world of possibility but a world all the same. He picked up on the fact that people were unnerved when he stayed still while he talked to them so he gave up the whole polite “sit and look and have open body language” for being able to not creep people out. It was fun too and he could do it without having to maintain eye contact which was, according to his calculations, the root of most of his problems.

That was a plus.

It also stopped him from looking too much like a miserable creepazoid who didn’t leave his room.

Not that it was necessarily a bad thing. His Dad worked from home and spent most of his time in his room and now that he was over the worst of it, as far as he could tell there was nothing creepy or untrustworthy or “wrong” about him. They were both more on the recluse side of things. Sitting alone is a lot easier than going out and working or sitting in a classroom and dealing with people staring at you.

Which is why Sal was always so much more comfortable doodling in his book and not paying attention to anyone around him.

He got good enough grades, he worked hard, he tried to help kids around him. He was okay, seriously.

The Addison apartments were fine. They were out of the way, surrounded by pine trees, lovely little path up to the door. Kind of a pain to get all the boxes inside but they managed.

They saw who Sal guessed was Addison on the way in. He peeked out through the mail slot and said some things to his Dad and handed them their new house keys and mentioned something about being “so sorry for the inconveniences” which they both thought was strange.

The place itself was strange. The beige everything and lime green doors sure were a design choice. The elevator was rickety and worrying. The faint but unmissable smell of weed came wafting through every time the doors opened. There was a general feeling that something had gone horribly wrong floating throughout the building. There was police tape on their neighbour's door. 

Sal peered at it as he hauled his last box through the door.

The next hour was spent sorting the boxes into their respective rooms, putting mattresses down, setting his Dad’s computer up and plugging in his TV.

And when that was done he found himself with nothing to do.

After surveying everything in the house (groceries, sleeping pills, boxes, Gizmo found himself a nice place to sit, boxes, nothing on TV, Gearboy! Sweet!) and a nice if not somewhat bittersweet conversation with his Dad he decided to take a look around and meet the new neighbours.

There was a cop outside the door now.

Sal had grown somewhat sceptical of authority, they were all sceptical of him so it worked in some nice poetic way. 

He was wearing thick boots, well shined and newish. It looked like they came off the shelf two days ago. Odd. Maybe he decided to treat himself? With… New work shoes?

Apparently, officers of the law don’t take so nicely to people looking at the ground when they’re talking to them. This guy seemed particularly riled up. Maybe a little antsy? The door was all fucked up so something bad must have happened in there.

He looked at his hat instead. Lovely badge he had. Really showed off the “treat me with respect” mindset.

He was polite, said hello, asked questions. Innocent of course but maybe slightly invasive.

“Why are you standing here?”

In response, he got some rant about nosey freaks and protecting places and not getting paid to babysit.

So far nothing quite out of the ordinary.

Sal learned quickly that with looking shifty came the immediate distrust of anyone around him. From that came people being assholes to try and sway him away from whatever they thought he was trying to do, which was more often than not just him wanting to say hi or ask where something was or getting the answer to a math question.

“Stupid weirdo kid.”

Yeah, that was what he was expecting to happen.

Down a level, he saw a lady busy mopping the floor.

Comfy looking worn out sneakers, the ends slightly soaked in from the puddle in front of her. She looked tired. Tired and occupied with a particular stain that just wasn’t getting out. Sal guessed it was coffee. No one was in the apartment beside her but he guessed it was probably coffee.

She looked shocked for a second.

He didn’t watch her gaze but he could tell she took the smallest second to skim over his face. She didn’t shake her head or nod to herself or go “Huh. Interesting.”

She just smiled at him and apologized about how gruesome it all was.

Larry Johnson sure was something.

Plain black sneakers, nothing special, hair longer than Sal’s (and just as unkempt), a dumb wallet with a chain, hands covered in paint.

He didn’t hold it against him that the first thing he commented on was his prosthetic, he was more polite than any other guy he knew.

He didn’t hold much against him come to think of it.

With the bullshit he went through, he wasn’t about to discount anything Larry told him.

They had some sort of unspoken agreement that they just believed the shit they told each other.

That’s what it started as at first. Just being able to talk to someone who wasn’t going to flip their shit. 

But it turns out that that’s just exactly what the basis of friendship actually was. Hmm, turns out there’s a first for everything, apparently.

That and a healthy, heaping helping of being able to play your music loud enough to blow an eardrum without bothering the neighbours.

Sal got more exercise swinging his hair around and falling on his ass when he inevitably lost balance than he ever did in hospital.

Take that, doctor!

It was interesting, really. Sal hadn’t really had anyone he’d actually call his friend until Larry. 

And apparently, friendship is contagious or something because he was just tripping and stumbling into new friends left right and centre.

With his sudden gain of new friends, his habits ended up shifting and crumbling before his eyes.

Doubled with the fact that his Dad had started an office job of all things, he had more time to do things like _socialise_ and stop being a miserable creepazoid who never left his own room. His thirteen year old sad sack day plan had been blown directly out of the water and he was oddly okay with it.

Gone were the days sitting alone in his room or sitting in the backyard doing nothing or lying on the couch contemplating like he was over dramatic and poetic or some shit. He actually had a reason to do things after school. He actually had a reason to _go_ to school.

Strange, really. He was seeing so much less of his own bedroom walls than he thought.

It was refreshing.

Well, it was almost overwhelming at first. He wasn’t used to coming home and saying hi to people on the way up. And not to mention the fact that he hadn’t heard the snarky tone outside of random kids at school. Odd, almost uncomfortably so.

He was brushing up on his people skills at least.

But he was still staring at the ground. His prosthetic was heavy, who could blame him?

Todd was the last person Sal thought he would befriend.

He soon found out that the sudden influx of illicit dried fruit juice smell was coming from his house and that it was, in fact, his parents to blame (he also found out that the sudden influx of illicit dried herbs in Larry’s room also came from Todd’s parents).

Plain brown shoes, comfy looking, probably didn’t spend too much time on sports, ridiculous giant glasses which were just slightly incorrect for his eyes.

They had a designated tech guy, that was always helpful.

Todd could just… Understand things.

The most Larry had was his police scanner and even then they had to frankenstein that too his Gearboy after Sal thought he broke the damn thing.

Impossible feats of science? Maybe.

Two dumbasses put in charge of their own ghost nabbing/demon hunting bullshit without a lick of computer talent between them? Most likely.

Ashley was Larry’s old friend and through a friendship based reach around, Sal was able to befriend her too.

Grey shoes (that’s probably bingo for school sneakers if he was ever keeping track), graphite smudged hands, what was either eyeliner or charcoal snapped in the bottom of her bag, an affinity for grunge.

He guessed if they were ordering themselves she would be the group sceptic.

The mandatory voice of reason, apparently.

She was the one person who managed to talk them out of their bullshit. Even Todd sometimes got caught up in his own head and came back with ridiculous theories and answers to questions people had no real reason to ask.

Ashley could understand _people_.

But of course that had to be overshadowed by the fact that his next door neighbour had been murdered, his best friend called in a fake robbery to keep the cops busy, he’d seen the bloodstains on the carpet and no one had wanted to move in since. 

Addison Apartments were crawling with ghosts.

Larry said with utmost certainty that he was cursed.

The familiar Addison smell had been slowly replaced with old meat.

Addison himself had never been the social type, but his eyes weren’t peeking through the mail slot as much as they used too.

Rose kept talking about death.

And there was always, _always_ something strange and twisted and darker than Sal could ever hope to explain afoot.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell that I ran out of ideas at the end?


End file.
